Content Marketing Paradox: Should Articles Be Long? Or Short?

If you Google “how long should articles be” you get close to 600-million results. Clearly, a lot of people have an opinion on this, and they are adamant that their answer is the right answer.

Articles “should be at least 1,000 words.”

But on the other hand, everything is going mobile so you should probably write shorter.

So, which is right? Should you writer shorter, or longer?

And the paradoxical answer is, of course, “yes.”

Short blog posts will work. Long form content will also work. There is no one answer for what is best, no matter what SEO gurus tell you. Writers understand this – you write until the story is told.

That said, it’s important that content creators understand how the length of articles impacts how those articles are read. This requires keeping the audience in mind. If you know your audience is consuming your content on mobile devices, the focus should be on shorter articles; 250 words is a good length for a phone – you could even go shorter. If you’re trying to get into deeper issues and drive a broader conversation, you’ll have to dig deeper and write longer. Maybe a couple thousand words.

A full content strategy will embrace both long form content and so-called “snackable content.” Like a star pitcher in baseball, you’ll change your speeds for the audience. And you won’t get hung up on how long the content is; you’ll just focus on making it spectacular.

You can’t engineer content. You can engineer its performance, but you can’t use an algorithm to come up with the perfect article length. So stop trying.